Here is another cat drawing copied from James Hartle's explicatory quantum diagrams (see previous post). He used a cubist-like rendering similar to this one on the left (only better drawn, those are supposed to be parts of a cat) to describe how in classical phsyics we expect parts to add up to a whole, and they do, while in quantum phsyics we must take all the parts as entities unto themselves, as they may be mutually exclusive, though still all necessary for a complete description. This sparked a discussion between myself and GH on the car-ride home about patterns, the relationship between Cubism and quantum theory, and the various perceptual, emotional, and conceptual challenges that face the task of knowing something absolutely. This is a leap, but to me these topics relate to the ongoing discussions here and elsewhere about art criticism. If indeed there is a loss of a perceptible hierarchy and voice of authority in criticsm (which I've yet to be convinced is the case), it is replaced with a messy but fertile plurality in which we gather information from mulitple sources, letting go of the idea that we are reading the "right" voice or even the primary source, but rather picking up whatever information and stimulation we need to move ahead with our projects. Losses of authorship = Gains in perspective.

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between cubism and quantum physics too. It’s always annoyed me that the official “explanation” of cubism that I was taught seems to end with a simple explanation, and that’s the end of the conversation. “it’s about time and space”, or something equally glib. I’ve always felt that the image in cubism doesn’t actually matter at all, it’s just an (at times beautiful) example of kind of a complex theory, but we never really get to the theory itself because the examples have turned into some of the most famous paintings ever. Like someone deciding your chest x-ray is a beautiful piece of art before the doctors get a look at it. “Yes, I’m sure my insides are glorious, but does that look malignant to you?”


I’ve never had an art teacher want to really touch cubism with a 20 foot pole (they make those now, for the new millennium).


I drove home past the Stanford particle accelerator tonight, maybe next time I’ll pop in and ask them what they think.
- joester 10-04-2004 10:53 am

Cubism was roughly contemporaneous with relativity theory, quantum mechanics came later. Arguably the Cubists (Picasso and Braque in '07-'11) hadn't really digested relativity theory either--that discussion didn't heat up in bohemia till the teens. They were hip to scientific discoveries, though--one thing everyone was talking about in '07 was that durn newfangled thing called...X-RAYS. There was always a heavy dose of BS in how "scientific"cubism was. It wasn't really overlapping simultaneous views--more like what overlapping simultaneous views would look like to an imagined, all-perceiving Romantic eye. Also, to some extent Cubism was an extension of Impressionist optical experiments--but much more subjective than useful, repeatable things like breaking down color. I didn't get any of this from my art teachers, either. I got more Modernist theory from my English lit classes (and subsequent reading around).
- tom moody 10-04-2004 6:51 pm

I wasn’t thinking that the cubists were really responding to the actual quantum theory but rather to the scientific milieu that the theory was born from. The way we describe quantum physics, and the way we describe cubism use very similar vocabulary. And in both descriptions, I'm left scratching my head going, "I think I understand ... "
- joester 10-04-2004 9:52 pm

i got the idea a while back that duchamp's obsession with chess (as art) came out of his back ground with dada (chance) and the "game theory" that was in the intellectual air of the day.
- bill 10-04-2004 10:03 pm

I keep dipping into Leonard Shlain's Art and Physics. The guy is a bit of a flake, nearly attributing mystical powers to art: "Despite [the Cubists'] lack of understanding of the intricacies of relativity and mathematical higher dimensions, it was the mute image and poetic metaphor of the artist that described what could no longer be explained simply and clearly by scientists,"(p.198) and "Nowhere was this conjunction between revolutionary art and visionary physics sharper than the intersection of Einsteins's relativity theory and Picasso and Braques' Cubism which ocurred despite a virtual absence of contact between the two fields."

However his corellations are good and I like these descriptions of Cubism:

In Buddhism there is a parable concerning the wind on the water. When a gentle wind crinkles a pool's still surface, the reflections on it are broken into a shimmering random light show. [...] It is only when the wind quiets and the pools becomes still again that it is possible to discern what lies beneath the surface. [...] Cubism reflects this parable. By chopping space and time into little chips, Cubism exaggertaes the ruffled appearance of reality's surface as wind does on the water, but at the same time it forces us to think about what is beyond, behind, and within the surface of the pool. (p.192)

[...and...]

Before Cubism all art in Western culture was either the depiction of a specific moment of a specific moment or a representation of a timeless ideal. In either case, the element of time was implicit in the artwork. Picasso and Braque eliminated both transietn adn eternal time. In a Cubist painting time does not exist. [...] Further, by destroying perspective Cubism eliminates depth. Without time or depth the Cubist painting has been reduced from four dimensions to two. The genius of Cubism is that it allows the viewer to escape from the system of reference that has three vectors of space and the coordinate of time. (p.200)

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- L.M. 10-08-2008 3:58 pm

funny coincidence that this spam made me re-read this thread. In my culture and technology class at school we have been talking a lot about cubism as related to science and technology of the time. Reading Steven Kern's book "The Culture of Time and Space" which is all about simultaneity at the turn of the century. He thinks the cubists were really influenced by cinema. Funny how Picasso had to come forward and defend cubism from being associated with this, that, and the other thing, and Einstein had to come forward and defend his theory of relativity from being associated with cubism.
- sally mckay 10-08-2008 4:10 pm

Personally, I think cubism was a blague. Like, Cezanne did all this serious cool stuff with the picture plane and Picasso and Braque thought, hey we could really mess with people if we just emphasized some of this a bit.
- sally mckay 10-08-2008 4:12 pm

I read The Culture of Time and Space years ago. But I had the advantage of reading it for fun, not for study.
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It is fun. Kern knows lots more about literature than he knows about art, but he's a hoot.
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